


a single soul sets his voice singing

by ADreamingSongbird



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M, i will Take the hammer and Fix nuri's murder, there is major character death alluded to but i'm here to Fix It, there is no major character death Technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 12:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16346963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADreamingSongbird/pseuds/ADreamingSongbird
Summary: Unfortunately for superheroes, "until death do us part" is always on the table.





	a single soul sets his voice singing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thishasbeencary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thishasbeencary/gifts), [seventhstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/gifts).
  * Inspired by [whatever lies will help you rest](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16343060) by [seventhstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar). 



> nuri ruined my life at 4 am, cary added fluff at 8 am, and now im here at 2 pm to slap a big fat bandaid on it at 2 pm. 
> 
> @nuri pls be gentle with my fragile heart  
> @cauwuy ilu too!!!!

They’ve been married for one thousand, two hundred, and forty-one days when it happens.

Life as a superhero always has some drawbacks. A major one is that one never knows which days will be normal, which ones will be exhausting, and which ones will be traumatizing. Sometimes all there is to a day is a grocery trip with one’s husband, and cooking dinner together and sitting on the living room floor afterwards to play with the dogs. Sometimes hours and hours go by in grueling fights, keeping everyone in the city safe, until all that’s left is to collapse into bed and sleep dreamlessly until morning.

And sometimes…

The wind picks up, sending sparks spiraling high into the night sky, and the burnt-out frame of what used to be an office building groans dangerously. Viktor’s body acts without thinking—his arms fly out, power catching the metal and pushing pushing pushing, and the full weight of the entire building settles into his shoulders. He groans back, an absurd parody of a conversation between superhero and structure, and pushes harder.

There are still people to save. He can’t let this tower fall on them.

As the wind dies back down for the moment, Viktor fishes a coin out of his pocket and drops it. Yuuri always worried, the first few times he saw Viktor do this: _isn’t that too small an area,_ or _what if it moves and you fall,_ or just a simple and plaintive _please be careful._ And Viktor understands—Yuuri is someone who worries, by nature. So he always kissed his then-boyfriend’s cheeks and promised he’d be fine, and shot away into the air.

But the thing is, it’s not unpredictable. There are tens of thousands of arcs he could take, just by altering his trajectory a little bit, just by leaning into or against the wind, with factor after factor to take into consideration. _Electromagnetic manipulation,_ people call it. Viktor likes to think of what he does as something simple, yet infinitely complex. A dance, a science, something in between. Mathematical, precise, and elegant.

And so it is that he hovers, suspended perfectly between the push from the coin and the subway tracks under the streets below, and the push from the building that keeps him stabilized, floating in midair. Mathematical. Precise. Elegant.

He lets his mind slip into something methodical, beginning from the top of the structure and working his way down. It’s simple enough, stripping away the beams and rafters and lowering them down into the central pile of rubble, working from top to bottom so that there’s nothing left to collapse on anyone who could be hurt. He adjusts how hard he needs to push from the coin as the building lowers and lowers. He’s so ready to go home; he’s tired, and he wants this to be over with.

And then, somewhere behind him, Yuuri _screams_.

Viktor nearly falls from the sky in shock.

Terror coursing through his veins, Viktor tears himself away from the building before he realizes what he’s doing, throwing himself like a ragdoll through the air towards his husband. He’s never heard Yuuri scream like that before, never never never—this wasn’t a mere cry of pain or a call for help, this was—this was _pain_ and _despair_ and the most horrific sound Viktor has ever heard in his life—

No. No, he has to be calm, has to think, has to be smart so that he can help Yuuri. He can’t—he can’t just hurl himself into battle and get hurt too. He… he…

Yuuri has to be ali— _alright_. He has to be. He has to, he has to, he has to.

The battleground where Viktor left him isn’t far, and the thick wall of ice preventing Guiding Hand from reaching the civilians Viktor was rescuing is easy to find. Viktor drops down atop a building nearby, frantically trying to ignore the deep-rooted fear in his bones so he can assess the situation.

He needs to find Yuuri.

He needs to stop Guiding Hand.

He needs to keep everyone safe.

And as much as he wants finding Yuuri to be his first priority, it _can’t_ be.

A loud, wrenching sob jerks his attention down to the rubble-strewn square behind him, and oh, god, he _knows_ that voice—horrified, he whirls and steals across the roof as fast as he can. What has Guiding Hand _done_ to his Yuuri?

And there they both are: Guiding Hand, tall and broad, adjusting his hat and standing over Yuuri. Yuuri, crumpled in the street, shaking and sobbing and clutching his hand to his chest but he’s _alive,_ and relief crashes over Viktor like a tsunami, nearly sweeping him off a cliff into the sea.

“This is just inconvenient,” Guiding Hand mutters, kicking at Yuuri’s side. Yuuri doesn’t respond, just curling in on himself and sobbing harder, and Guiding Hand lets out an annoyed huff. “Little hero, melt this wall and I’ll make it stop hurting…”

Yuuri doesn’t respond.

Viktor has seen _enough._

The thing with Guiding Hand is this:

Guiding Hand can see across multiverses. He’s extremely powerful, especially with the element of surprise on his side, because he can tell what’s coming, almost always, unless there are so many possibilities that he can’t determine which is real, and it’s difficult to get the jump on him. His powers allow him to force these visions on others, which is why he’s so dangerous; around civilians, he’s easily able to terrify people out of their minds so they abandon their posts and leave him a bank vault (as he did last month, until Yuuri caught him).

But it also means that in the face of sheer physical power, he’s a bit helpless. Mind powers can only do so much in the face of, for example, a formidable wall of ice, or a wildfire, or the burnt-out husk of a building he himself set fire to.

So when Viktor drops from above to kick him _hard_ to get him away from Yuuri, and then Viktor drops five tons of metal wrapped into a cage to contain him, there really isn’t much he can do.

In the ensuing silence, the police sirens wailing in the distance and the crackling of the remaining dying fires are shatteringly loud. But all Viktor can hear is his own harsh breathing and Yuuri’s heartwrenching sobs.

He runs to Yuuri, then, _runs_ and drops to his knees in the rubble, uncaring of the pain, and pulls him into his arms, cradles him close. “Yuuri, Yuuri Yuuri Yuuri, my love, my heart,” he breathes, kissing his forehead, wiping his tears, holding him tight. “Look at me. Please. Come back to me, darling, come back.”

“Vitya,” Yuuri whimpers, and for a moment Viktor thinks he’s got him, that he’s back in this reality, that all is well. But then he keeps crying, unresponsive. “Vitya, _please,_ no, please, don’t… don’t… Vitya, you can’t—no, no no no no no—”

“Sweetheart,” Viktor begs. His heart hurts and his stomach lurches in his chest at the raw, broken way Yuuri is pleading with him—with a different him in a different universe, but still, with him—and he can’t. “Please, Yuuri, please, wake up, wake up!”

“Vitya. Vitya!” Yuuri cries out and collapses, limp, all the tension vanishing from his body as abruptly as a puppet falls when cut from its strings. “No, no, no… no, please…”

Viktor clutches him to his chest, swallowing hard against tears of his own. He’s never seen Yuuri cry like this, never heard him scream like he did earlier, never… never, never. This shouldn’t be happening. What did Guiding Hand force him to see? “Darling, come back to me, please, I’m here, my Yuuri… please, please, I’m here, I love you…”

And then Yuuri’s eyes fly open, and he gasps for breath, a drowning man finally returned to the surface. “Vitya?”

“I’ve got you,” Viktor promises, so relieved he nearly bursts into tears. “I’m here, you—mmm!”

Yuuri kisses him hard, arms flung about his neck, and presses him close with freezing hands. He tastes of salt from sweat and tears, and his lips are chapped. Viktor has never loved him more.

“Sweetheart,” he finally breathes, once Yuuri loosens his grip. “It’s okay. It’s over. It’s over. We’re okay. I’ve got you.”

Yuuri looks like he’s about to cry again, but at the last second he pitches forward and buries his face in Viktor’s neck instead. “Can—can we go home? Please?”

“Let’s go home.” Viktor keeps his voice quiet, arms tight around his husband, as he shifts to drop another coin, lifting them both up into the night air.

Yuuri doesn’t say a word until they’re home, just clinging fiercely to Viktor and crying soft, muffled tears into his shoulder. He stays silent as Viktor opens the front door, though he clutches desperately at his hand, and he’s quiet as Viktor leads him to the bathroom. It’s only when the hot water is pounding away at his back and Viktor is holding him tight to his chest that Yuuri finally finds his voice.

“On the eleven-hundred-and-sixty-third day of our marriage,” he whispers. “Do you remember that day?”

Viktor looks at the wedding band on his finger. This morning, he changed _1240_ to _1241_ as he lay in bed, playing with Yuuri’s hand while Yuuri snoozed away, head tucked against his chest. It hasn’t been 1163 in months. Three months.

Three months ago was…

“Valentine’s Day?” he asks, softly, and even before Yuuri nods, he knows he’s right by the way he goes stiff in his arms. “Oh, Yuuri…”

Yuuri holds him tighter, one hand on his back creeping over to brush against the big, unsightly scar there, and Viktor swallows hard. There’s one to match on his stomach. He really thought he was going to die that day—the doctors said it was a close thing, too. Another minute or so of blood loss, and they wouldn’t have been able to save him.

Valentine’s Day. The worst day their marriage has seen yet.

He suddenly thinks he knows what Guiding Hand forced Yuuri to see.

When Yuuri speaks again, his voice is thick with tears. “He showed me… You died that day. You died and I wasn’t even _with_ you and—and my ring didn’t change again and—and six m-months later I, I was still b-buying food for—for both of us—and M-Makka didn’t _understand,_ would j-just sit and cry f-for you every damn _day,_ and, and—”

He breaks off into another harsh sob, burying his face in Viktor’s neck, and Viktor bows his head and holds him as tight as he possibly can. If any tears run down his own face, he can always pretend they’re just shower water.

Six months.

Six months of grief, compressed into six minutes.

He can’t even reassure him _it wasn’t real._ Guiding Hand’s multiverses, as far as anyone can tell, _are_ real. Somewhere out there, there’s a Yuuri who lost his Vitya on Valentine’s Day, and Viktor’s Yuuri felt six months of his grief, crushed into his heart in just an instant.

Yuuri cries into his arms for minutes that feel like hours, as Viktor rubs his back and kisses his hair and rocks him back and forth and whispers frantic “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,”s between “I love you, I love you, I love you”s, and Yuuri clutches at him and kisses him, messy and emotional and perfect, and cries himself hoarse.

The hot water runs out before they manage to detangle themselves from each other to wash up, and then they have to scramble to shampoo each other’s hair and pass the soap back and forth in a shower that’s growing colder by the second. It’s so domestic and normal and ridiculous that Yuuri breaks into a wet, sniffly laugh as Viktor hisses while washing his hair, and then Viktor has to stop to pull him into a kiss, and then one kiss turns into two, and two turns into five, and five turns into a shriek because the water has gone absolutely frigid, and then they’re stumbling out of the shower to throw on clothes and burrow into the blankets of their bed.

They lie in the darkness for a few seconds, and Viktor hugs Yuuri close, almost laughing because they haven’t done something this silly in a while and it feels _good._ Then arms twine about his neck, and he hums, pressing his forehead to his husband’s.

“Hi,” Yuuri whispers, curling his hands into Viktor’s cold, wet hair and pulling him into a kiss.

“Hi,” Viktor whispers back, caressing his cheek. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.” Yuuri hesitates, leaning into his touch, and sighs. “Not great. But… better.”

“I’ll take better.” Viktor kisses him again, tender and sweet, and Yuuri melts against him, pressing him closer and deepening the kiss into something more passionate. Viktor responds by draping his leg across Yuuri’s, too, kissing him until he sighs, and then kissing him some more. “Mm.”

“Never leave me,” Yuuri whispers into the stillness, after that, and Viktor presses their foreheads together and nuzzles his nose and does his best to kiss away the fragility and the fear in his voice.

“I won’t,” he promises. “I won’t.”

In the morning, he wakes to find Yuuri’s legs tangled in his own, his left arm entirely asleep because Yuuri has been lying on it for who knows how long, and a lock of Yuuri’s hair more or less up his nose. He blinks, pulls away, and sneezes, and Yuuri makes a disgruntled noise in his sleep, rolling even more fully on top of him.

Viktor laughs softly, watches those dark eyelashes lay against pale, soft cheeks, and loses himself for several seconds in a daydream about the meaning of the word _contentment._ Then Yuuri sighs, stirring for a moment, and Viktor smiles at him, kisses the top of his head, and takes his hand.

“S’not mornin’ yet,” Yuuri mumbles, even though the sun is clearly up. Viktor adores him. “Not gettin’ up.”

“You don’t have to,” Viktor assures him, smiling against his hair. Yuuri seems satisfied by this, closing his eyes with a tiny peep, and Viktor squeezes his hand. When he lets go, the numbers on both of their rings have changed again:

1242.


End file.
